Musical notation is a way of writing down musical sounds so that a singer or instrumentalist can reproduce them as the composer intends. As well as showing the pitch and length of the sounds, the notation gives information about how the notes should be played.
Musical notation, visual record of heard or imagined musical sound, or a set of visual instructions for performance of music. It usually takes written or printed form and is a conscious, comparatively laborious process. Its use is occasioned by one of two motives: as an aid to memory or as communication. By extension of the former, it helps the shaping of a composition to a level of sophistication that is impossible in a purely oral tradition. By extension of the latter, it serves as a means of preserving music (although incompletely and imperfectly) over long periods of time, facilitates performance by others, and presents music in a form suitable for study and analysis.
The primary elements of musical sound are pitch, or the location of musical sound on the scale (hence interval, or distance, between notes); duration (hence rhythm, metre, tempo); timbre or tone colour; and volume (hence stress, attack). In practice, no notation can handle all of these elements with precision. Most cope with a selection of them in varying degrees of refinement. Some handle only a single pattern—e.g., a melody, a rhythm; others handle several simultaneous patterns.
The position of staff notation as the first notational system to be described in this article acknowledges its international acceptance in the 20th century. As an indirect result of colonization, of missionary activity, and of ethno-musicological research—not because of any innate superiority—it has become a common language among many musical cultures.